


Canyons

by hemiola



Category: Super Junior
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Reunions, can be taken as romantic or platonic, the 2019 cosmo glam night fic we all needed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22241290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hemiola/pseuds/hemiola
Summary: “Heechul,” Hangeng says, his voice still the same. Hangeng looks at him like he can’t quite believe Heechul is here— directly across from him, across from the gaping canyon of a decade of silence and hurt. His smile is beautiful. In the last days of the lawsuit Heechul had not seen him smile at all.
Relationships: Han Geng | Hankyung/Kim Heechul
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	Canyons

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: i’m not exactly satisfied but i’ve decided to stop judging myself based on something barely anyone would see. this isn’t entirely accurate to real life events, while it does draw on them somewhat. the heechul/ hangeng could be taken as romantic or platonic, it’s up to you. hope you enjoy!

When Heechul finds out that he’s attending the 2019 Cosmo Glam Night, he very carefully does not think about it. Heechul knows that not only is there a language barrier, but also someone Heechul is not quite ready to meet. So he doesn’t think about it, puts years of well-trained avoidance tactics to the test and prays that they hold out. 

No one asks him about it and Heechul wasn’t expecting anyone to, except the fandom that had descended from the dark like ravenous beasts to feast upon the Super Junior interaction they were long deprived of. No one asks but one of his stylists, who chances a wordless peek at him when Heechul first receives the news. This stylist has been with Heechul since 2009, since _Hankyung_ and not _Hangeng,_ and out of the corner of his eye, Heechul can see that the twist of her mouth is edged with something like melancholy. Heechul does not look back at her and she does not ask why it matters. 

Heechul’s avoidance tactics hold out well enough, but Heechul looks him up on Naver just once, in a moment of weakness he swears not to give away. 

Just because he can, just because there is no one to stop him and look at him and whisper, _Heechul-ie, please,_ like Leeteuk would. just because Donghae is no longer here to hug him, just because Super Junior is halfway across the world on their next SS8 concert, and Heechul could not be _Super Junior’s_ Heechul without them, could not be the Super Junior member that would stay silent, keep his head down, and not search Hangeng up on Naver out of morbid curiosity. 

The name is unfamiliar under his fingers but the pictures come up easily enough, and the sight of him is nothing but an old wound. His features has matured with time and he has aged too, but he still smiles prettily and he is handsome enough to devastate. The ache that comes is familiar. Heechul closes his eyes and tells himself this isn’t love, that it can’t still be love after so long. That Hangeng had chosen to leave, that Hangeng was still _Super Junior_ but he was no longer in their group chat, that they no longer had any sense or obligation towards each other apart from the title that bound them: _Super Junior_ , still so eerily brilliant and awful. 

Hangeng is still Super Junior, but Heechul cannot love him the same way he loves Donghae, or Eunhyuk, or Kyuhyun. Hangeng is Super Junior but a decade too late for the empty title to matter, too many missed albums for it to matter. Heechul had wanted him there, sometimes, so despicably weak he hadn’t breathed a word of it to anyone else. In the first few albums after Hangeng left, still counting the number of heads, still looking for a frail back, still looking for someone who understood as absolutely as Hangeng did. 

Heechul had not counted thirteen heads in a long time, and he never found the answer he was looking for, so he stopped looking. In the last few albums he had not thought of Hangeng at all. 

Heechul opens his eyes, stares at the picture on the screen that stares back, smile wide and eyes crinkled, and tells himself that Hangeng is still _Super Junior_ but Heechul cannot love him like he is. The ache in his chest tells a different story, but Heechul is very good at deliberate ignorance. 

* * *

The night before the event, Heechul dreams again of the past, of a memory Heechul considered worthless at the time, but now mattered so much. The memory wraps its fingers around Heechul’s throat just to hurt him one last time, awful and familiar and as worn as a memory can be, immortalised in Heechul’s mind. 

It is at the height of their career, right after the release of “Sorry Sorry”, when Heechul and Hankyung finally knew what it felt like to be somebody instead of nobodies with pretty faces, when Hankyung pushed him into a taxi and whispered something to the driver. Heechul stared at him with open suspicion.

“What is this, Hankyung,” he said flatly. 

Hankyung smiled. “Don’t look outside, hyung. Just talk to me.”

“You fool,” Heechul sighed, but he obeyed anyway, unable to resist when Hankyung smiled so prettily and openly. They bickered in the backseat for a long while as the taxi driver drove on, mindless of his presence, self-absorbed in a way that amateur stars hitting big for the first time were, before the taxi stopped. 

Heechul turned to look outside but startled as Hankyung slapped a hand over his eyes. “Don’t, hyung.” There was the sound of paper bills as Hankyung paid the driver, and Heechul felt blindly for the handle and exited the taxi, shaking off Hankyung’s hand but facing the taxi so as not to ruin Hankyung’s surprise. 

Perhaps Heechul was soft after all. The way Hankyung’s eyes lit up was worth it, though. “Close your eyes, Heechul, I’ll show you a miracle.”

“Use ‘hyung’, stupid.” Heechul tried to whack him on the head but Hangeng danced out of reach easily, smile mischievous. “Where did you learn that word?”

“From the Chinese-Korean dictionary, of course.”

“You’re not pronouncing it correctly.”

“Just close your eyes hyung, geez, you’re so annoying.” Hankyung smoothed his hand over Heechul’s eyes and Heechul tried blindly to smack his arm, Hankyung letting him with a wince and a muttered curse. 

Hankyung led him somewhere as the taxi drove off, Heechul trying his best to trip Hankyung without falling over himself, and after what seemed like an eternity Hankyung tugged him to a stop and said with a smile in his voice, “Open your eyes, hyung. I’ll show you a miracle.” 

He sounded warm and Heechul’s heart swelled too big to contain, so Heechul opened his eyes without further complaint. Around them are a sea of blinking lights, flickering on and off and lighting up what would otherwise be a completely dark forest. 

“Fireflies. Aren’t they pretty?”

Fireflies were nothing new to Heechul and they looked only like weak, flickering lights that needed to be replaced. They were pretty, sure, but they weren’t a miracle. Hankyung’s eyes were barely visible, dark and endless and lovely, and Heechul understood then that the true miracle dwelled somewhere else. 

Heechul looked away so he didn’t fall into their trap and blurted out instead, “They are pretty, but why did you bring me here? Bring your girlfriend here sometime, you fool, you’ve gotta treat her right before she gets herself together and dumps you.”

Hankyung just smiled back, catching Heechul’s hand in his and swinging their joint hands back and forth with a strange sort of cheer, not at all discouraged by Heechul’s words. “Look at that, hyung,” he said easily, and Heechul forgot all about the sadness of his smile.

* * *

The lawsuit came and ended so fast it didn’t have time to sink in. The name _Super Junior_ was shredded as Hankyung packed his bags and left the dorm before Heechul had a chance to find him and pin him against some wall so he couldn’t run and ask _why, why, Hankyung._

The part of him that had understood Hankyung’s reasons felt worse because Hankyung was, indeed, right. It was unfair to him, and Hankyung had no duty to hold on to Super Junior despite its struggles, had no duty to stay with Heechul at all. 

The rest of the group was equally as torn up, just in different ways. Leeteuk sunk into himself quietly and unobtrusively, attending many meetings with SM and coming back haggard. Heechul wanted to sink into himself the same way but taught himself to be loud instead, and taught himself anger because that came far more easily than hurt did. Kyuhyun stopped humming in the dorms. Ryeowook had tried his best to smile. Donghae hugged Heechul a lot more and very carefully didn’t cry. Yesung’s eyebags got worse. Siwon was barely home. Kangin had been angry the same way Heechul was for a much longer time. Sungmin cried. Shindong smiled the same, but he laughed much less easily. Eunhyuk went to the dance studio and came back at two am, and Heechul knew he was envisioning the choreography with two missing spots. 

Heechul still wanted to scream, _My eyes are still closed, Hankyung. Please. Show me your miracle._

The miracle did not come. 

In the days afterwards Heechul had tried his best to unlearn _Hankyung_ and let go. To unlearn the shape of his smile and mannerisms and the way he shuttered away on variety shows when at a loss. It was strangely easy to forget something Heechul tried so hard to learn, and so Heechul forgot what he did when he was embarrassed, how his laugh sounded, how long his fingers were. What, however, was not easy to forget was his missing position in their old songs, the many news articles that would pop up whenever Heechul searched “Super Junior”, and the hole he left in Heechul’s heart. 

Heechul tried his best, but in the end he could only unlearn so much of _Hankyung. Hankyung_ still stayed vaguely familiar, but that wasn’t important in the end when all that was left was _Hangeng,_ was someone Heechul didn’t know. Heechul stopped waiting for _Hankyung’s_ miracle to come, and slowly stopped expecting it to. 

* * *

The night comes, as much as Heechul had avoided thinking about it. Heechul gets there early and after going through the motions of posing and greeting, Heechul finds himself alone in the crowd. Around him, the crowd speaks to each other in fluent Chinese as Heechul strains, going onto his tiptoes to look for something familiar. There: the sight of a back, strong and firm. Heechul has tried his best to unlearn dependence, to unlearn hurt, but it still presses heavy against the back of his throat, a phantom ache. 

The back hovers in the crowd, caught up in the crowd of people. Heechul thinks of the small frail back that had unwittingly clung to Heechul in the early days of Super Junior, when his Korean wasn’t good and his Chinese still too familiar. When Heechul had joked and translated for him, when Heechul had made fun of him for the show before touching his back in something like an apology. 

Heechul is older now, but the loneliness is still the same, that: _He used to be mine only,_ still so heavy and awful. 

_Super Junior’s Hangeng_. It doesn’t come as easily as it once did. Here, no one knows Hangeng as _Super Junior,_ here, the title _Super Junior_ wraps its hands around Heechul’s throat and squeezes. Heechul is tired of being left behind. 

Someone calls his name from behind him in familiar Korean and Heechul turns just so he doesn’t have to watch Hangeng leave. 

After a while, though, Hangeng finds Heechul anyways. Heechul knows he would, not with the same certainty that he knows Chinese still comes easier to Hangeng than Korean, but with something more like longing. He is caught up with an acquaintance of his, joking away, when there is a warm hand on his back. Heechul is used to skinship from his members and friends, falls into them as easy as breathing, and Heechul doesn’t flinch instinctively but he kind of wants to.

Behind him is someone that has brought infinitely more longing and hurt than comfort. Heechul misses the Hangeng he used to have, small and frail. When he turns, this Hangeng is unfamiliar, this Hangeng Heechul does not know like he used to. This Hangeng is a stranger made by time and age. Hangeng stares back, face much more lined and haggard, but there are laugh lines around the corners of his eyes and his smile at Heechul is warm. 

Heechul thought the part of him that screamed, for years after the lawsuit, would’ve screamed _I wish you would be happy, you deserve happiness, I am so glad you are here,_ but the voice that wanted the best for Hangeng is no longer here. The sight of him brings back hurt a decade old. Heechul ignores the voice in his gut that screams, _Tell him he should be sorry, tell him he hurt you, tell him you can’t forgive him. Please, ask him about the fireflies, ask if he remembers them and the miracle he promised._ Heechul smiles. Hangeng smiles back, the tiny wrinkles in his face creasing pleasantly. _How do you explain that the memory of the fireflies has reached across countries, across time and space, to hurt you again?_

Heechul knows he has aged too, but it is only then he truly realises the gravity of time. “Heechul,” Hangeng says, his voice still the same. Heechul wants to hear him sing, for his wife if not for Heechul, wants to hear if the voice sounds the same in song. 

“Hangeng,” he very carefully says instead of _Hankyung_ , instead of _I miss you._

Hangeng looks at him like he can’t quite believe Heechul is here— directly across from him, across from the gaping canyon of a decade of silence and hurt. His smile is beautiful. In the last days of the lawsuit Heechul had not seen him smile at all. 

Hangeng lifts his arms a little hesitantly, smile verging on awkward, and Heechul can’t help love, can’t help the warmth that rises like a wave inside him that screams, _Hangeng, Super Junior’s Hankyung,_ that says quietly, _Hello there, I missed you._ Heechul falls into him with open arms, with his heart fluttering like tiny birds in his chest, with a hurt he’d thought for ages he’d managed to leave behind. The fabric of Hangeng’s suit is rough under his fingers, Hangeng’s arms warm around Heechul’s back. 

There is still a decade of ache Heechul has to unlearn. _Hankyung, Super Junior’s Hankyung_ , Heechul still wants to say, but he knows better. 

  
  
  
  



End file.
